Precious Thing

By Colette McBethMinotaur, 2014

Children of the Revolution

By Peter RobinsonMorrow, 2014

By Its Cover

By Donna LeonAtlantic Monthly, 2014In her bellwether 1926 novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie introduced a cunning narrative trick that created an uproar among mystery readers. At the outset of Colette McBeth’s Precious Thing, one suspects that the “Ackroydal device” is here at play. I say “suspects” because it’s more premonition than proof. The narrative takes the form of a confidential letter from Rachel Walsh to her childhood best friend Clara O’Connor. We do not know where Rachel is writing from, only the letter’s date, September 2007:

I can’t rest until I reach you. Oh what I’d give to see you one last time, to have you look me in the eye and know, without a flicker of doubt, that I have only ever loved you, that everything I have done was driven by a fierce desire to protect you.I don’t blame you for thinking otherwise. I blame the people who’ve poisoned you with their lies…. No one is ever who they appear to be. Not me. Not you.

Cut back to January 2007. Rachel is in Brighton to reconnect with Clara after a long hiatus. Years earlier, Rachel was the chubby, ungainly new girl in school magically befriended by the smashing, charismatic Clara. They formed a seemingly unbreakable, albeit unlikely, bond. Now Rachel is a successful TV journalist with a full personal life, while Clara is a footloose artist back from a seven-year stint abroad that included time in a psychiatric ward. Their reunion never takes place: Clara doesn’t show. When a disoriented Rachel is summoned to a press conference to cover the disappearance of a young woman, she is horrified to learn that it’s Clara who is missing.As the hunt for Clara escalates, Rachel becomes the lead suspect implicated by a series of bizarre, inexplicable events. Many of them could only be set up by someone who knew her as Clara does! The police get three anonymous phone messages naming her as a killer. She has the sense of being stalked, her personal belongings are rearranged in her locked apartment, she swears she hears Clara’s laugh. Has she gone mad and blocked her role in Clara’s disappearance? Or is Clara orchestrating these happenings as revenge for that one unspeakable act they both vowed would remain a secret forever? Nothing is forever.Precious Thing is a beautifully constructed psychological thriller with a maddeningly ambiguous finale. There are many revelations, many answers, no absolute truths. But as Oscar Wilde said, “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.”In my review last year of Peter Robinson’s last Inspector Banks novel Watching the Dark, I ended by saying: “I want Robinson and Banks to go on forever.” Happily, in the newest novel to feature Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks (the 21st), Children of the Revolution, he is stronger than ever. In fact, near the opening of Children, Area Commander (AC) Catherine Gervaise (out of earshot he calls her Madame) proposes a promotion.

“ Detective Superintendent! Hang on. Wait a minute. You flatter me but…”“It’s not flattery. Think about it, Alan. That’s all I ask…. You don’t have to make up your mind right at this very moment…. Let’s give it until this Miller case is settled…By then, with any luck, you’ll have yet another feather in your cap, if you keep your nose clean, that is.”“Whatever you say, ma’am.”

Actually, the Miller case unfolds as anything but a propitious path to another feather in Banks’s cap. The body of an emaciated old man is found on an abandoned railroad track in North Yorkshire. He is Gavin Miller, a former Eastvale College lecturer. There are five thousand pounds in his pocket, which belies the barebones existence a search of his dreary signalman’s cottage reveals. Drugs? Blackmail? To Banks, the money all but rules out suicide. That it was left on his person is as puzzling as it is peculiar.As Banks and his team delve into Miller’s life they discover that he was dismissed by Eastvale College four years earlier on charges of sexual misconduct. He may look seventy but he is only fifty-nine, which is disconcertingly close to Banks age. Even more surprising to Banks, he was a Dead Head: His music collection, mostly vinyl, contains, in addition to plenty of Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix, an inordinate amount of the Grateful Dead.The most interesting connection to Miller’s past may be Lady Veronica Chalmers. A great beauty, she is the wife of Sir Jeremy Chalmers, a renowned international theatrical producer. She is also a bestselling romance novelist and her nephew is about to be named Home Secretary. They live on a grand estate which the locals call “Millionaire’s Row.” When Banks first calls on her, “he felt like Philip Marlowe going to visit Colonel Sternwood, though he doubted that he would find Lady Chalmers sitting in a hothouse.”Hardly! She greets him in an elegant room with a commanding view of the town. And in her best to-the-Manor-born voice tells him at once, “My friends call me Ronnie.” Only slightly intimidated, he turns the small talk to a Hockney painting on the wall. She confesses to being intrigued by a policeman who knows something about art. But she is really impressed when she realizes who his son is:

“Alan Banks. I should have known. The policeman with the rock musician son…. Samantha, my youngest, absolutely adores the Blue Lamps.”“My fame precedes me, clearly, said Banks. “I’m Brian Banks’s father, yes, for my sins.” Though he liked to complain about it to his son, Banks was secretly proud to be the father of such a popular and accomplished musician. And the Blue Lamps were doing well.

Still, it does chafe a little when Lady Chalmers’ assistant, Oriana, serves tea and she introduces him as “Brian Banks’s father.” And when he tries to find out why Gavin Miller recently phoned her, tea and camaraderie aside, he gets ever so politely stonewalled. It makes him more than a little suspicious.Turns out “Ronnie” had a rebellious youth. One old school chum from the University of Essex dubs her “Prom Queen for the Marxist Society.” Plus, during the miners’ strike of late 1971 and early 1972 which almost brought down the government, when Essex played host to some of the striking miners, Ronnie had a fling with “the hunkiest”, Joe Jarvis. He later rose high in the union ranks and in Banks’s circle, is now the Joe Jarvis. And can it be mere coincidence that Gavin Miller was a student at Essex at the same time? As Lady Chalmers points out when confronted by Banks during a second, less cordial, visit, the school wasn’t small and it was forty years ago. Deftly, she spins a skillful and believable tale of denial for him. “Ah what a tangled web we weave…”Robinson is terrific with the small stuff. He turns episodes that seem minor in the scheme of things into pivotal parts of the whole crime scenario. The scene between Banks and a dying Joe Jarvis is a gem. Oh they start with the old days and young Ronnie, but they wind up discussing where Shostakovich stood in relation to Stalin. In a recent interview with Publishers Weekly, Robinson indicated that Jarvis is one of his favorite characters.Then there is Banks meeting with the man from MI5 at Gervaise’s behest. It is pure, understated entertainment. A taste:

“I understand you have already met, Mr. Browne, DCI Banks?” said Gervaise.“Mr. Browne,” said Banks. “With an ‘e.’ Yes, indeed.”Browne inclined his head briefly in greeting, his expression inscrutable as ever. They had met once before during a particularly politically sensitive case…. How many run-ins with MI5 could the average police career survive? he wondered…. Why did he always feel he was entering into a John le Carré novel every time he talked to Mr. Browne? Well this was only the second time, to be strictly fair, but he felt that it could never be otherwise.

As usual, when depicting the Chief Inspector’s often abrasive relationship with higher-ups, his insights into police hierarchy is unparalleled. His colleagues are consistently fleshed out with fascinating detail and wry observation. One of the pleasures of reading the Banks novels is that you learn something new about familiar characters in each one. .No one practices the basic art of detection better than Banks. Children of the Revolution is a virtuoso addition to the series. As I said in an earlier review of his work, “Peter Robinson’s skill with the British police procedural has been polished to a high gloss”.Vandalism in places that are set apart from the loud intrusions of the modern world—such as libraries--is particularly heinous, especially to booklovers. The rituals and routines practiced in libraries represent order and harmony. A library that houses rare books of incalculable value is a sacred place, or should be. Thus any crime that takes place there is particularly shocking. Which is precisely the reaction of Dottoressa Fabbiani in the beginning of By Its Cover, the 23rd in Donna Leon’s elegant Venetian mystery series starring Commissario Guido Brunetti.

‘Brunetti.’‘You’re a commissario?’‘Yes.’‘This is Dottoressa Fabbiani. I’m the chief librarian at the Biblioteca Merula. We’ve had a theft. A number of them, I think.’ Her voice was unsteady, the voice he had heard from victims of muggings or assault.‘From the collection?’ Brunetti asked. He knew the library, had used it once or twice as a student.‘Yes.’‘What’s been taken?’ …‘We don’t know the full extent yet. So far, all I’m sure of is that pages have been cut from some volumes.’ He heard her deep intake of breath.‘How many?’ Brunetti asked, pulling a pad and pencil towards him.‘I don’t know. I just discovered it.’ Her voice tightened as she spoke....’You have records of the people who use the books, don’t you?’…’Of course. We’re checking on that.’…’The sooner we find him, the less time he’ll have to sell what he’s taken.’ He saw no reason to spare her this reality.‘But the books are destroyed,’ she said, sounding anguished, as at the death of a loved person.To a librarian, damage was a bad as theft, he imagined…. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can, Dottoressa. Please do not touch anything.’

Once at the library, Brunetti learns that the likely pillager is a regular. He has credentials that identify him as an American professor from the University of Kansas. No surprise, they are false. And before you can say al ladro! (stop thief!), he’s taken a powder and vanished without a trace.Brunetti’s only lead is a library patron and ex-priest who is often there at the same time as the bogus professor. The staff calls him Tertullian because he has spent three years reading the Christian author’s work. Before the police can interview him, Tertullian is found brutally murdered and the case takes on a whole new meaning.Brunetti’s forte is reading people. Ferreting out their motivations in even the most unlikely situations and shedding light on why they do the things they do and what that says about them and us. He’s sensitive, he cares. The superficial is his enemy. Here, he’s at the top of his game.As is Donna Leon’s wont, each new novel tackles a social cause with flair and style By Its Cover was evidently inspired by the looting of Naples’s Girolamini Library by its director, a systematic plundering of thousands of rare books that was discovered in 2012. To paraphrase a colleague: It’s a new Leon novel, and it’s set in a library. Must we go on?____Irma Heldman is a veteran publishing executive and book reviewer with a penchant for mysteries. One of her favorite gigs was her magazine column “On the Docket” under the pseudonym O. L. Bailey.